A Game of Association
by QueenMegaera
Summary: "Not all days contain life or death situations. Not all missions end in dead bodies and burning buildings." 12 stand-alone stories, loosely connected, based on the test Bond does at the beginning of Skyfall. Most are Craig!James Bond/Whishaw!Q. All are post-Skyfall. See each chapter for additional warnings. Inspired both by the Craig movies and the actual novels.
1. Day - Wasted

_A/N for the whole series: A series of short fics, inspired by the word couples from the test Bond is put through in Skyfall. Set in "Craig-time" (post-Skyfall) but drawing heavily from the books. Several of them are going to be Bond/Q. Because apparently I can't get that pairing out of my head._

_Disclaimer: Nothing belongs to me and I make no money off of it._

_A/N for ch. 1/"word no. 1": This one draws heavily on the descriptions of Bond's everyday duties and habits in the Moonraker novel. Slightly updated, of course. The number of double-O's, the rough frequency of their missions, and their secretary Miss Ponsonby are also taken from the book._

_Pre-slash._

_Summary: Not every day contained a life or death situation. Most days, in fact, only contained endless MI6-reports, workouts, and a visit to Q-branch to sharpen his wits against Q's._

**Day – Wasted**

James Bond lead a very exciting life – a few weeks of each year. The rest of the time, when there were no assignments suited for a double-O, he spent his days preparing for potential missions. Missions that might never come along. God only knew how many reports he had read on sticky political situations abroad that were later resolved without the slightest involvement of MI6, or on newly developed weapons in Russia or America that were obsolete before Bond ever got a chance to lay his hands on them. Rebel uprisings turned into revolutions, revolutions turned into governments and governments got overthrown – all of it reaching Bond as black letters on white papers in manila folders placed in the inbox of the double-O-section. MI6 reports: many of them were utterly dull, most of them would never turn out to be useful, and absolutely all of them had to pass before his eyes before they could be filed away. This was part of the reason agents like him were given cyanide capsules: they knew everything. Well, everything the MI6 officially knew, anyway. There was no doubt in Bond's mind that M, Tanner, and some of the department heads knew a considerable amount besides that.

Computers had slowly been taking the place of paper over the decade Bond had been in the Service, but plenty of the old manila folders were still in circulation – at least in the parts of the building rarely visited by members of Q-branch. Bond rather liked it that way. He knew his way around a computer, despite what Q thought, but he found paper easier on the eyes when he had to spend a whole day reading, and it allowed him to make notes in the margin for the other two active double-O-agents if he was the first of them to read it.

Practical training was a better pastime. From the Service's point of view it was absolutely necessary for him to stay in shape and keep his reflexes sharp. From his own point of view, it cleared his mind, cleansed his body and raised his endorphin-levels. Being able to exercise during work hours was an occupational bonus Bond had always had, both in the Navy and in the Service, and a day without at least 30 minutes on the treadmill or a round of mixed martial arts against another stranded field agent made him feel as if something was seriously wrong. A round on the firing range never hurt either. A few years after he'd joined, Bond had been the best shot in the service. He didn't want to ask where he ranked now. Even though he'd picked up most of what he'd lost when Moneypenny had shot him and sent him halfway to the grave, he wasn't stupid enough to believe he was anywhere near as good as he had been. Still, he was certainly a better marksman than anyone outside of the double-O-section, and he supposed that counted for something.

Bond divided his office-bound days into three shifts: reading, training (followed by a late lunch), and reading again. When the lights began to go out in the offices around him, he finished whatever outlandish rapport he was currently reading – today it was a paper on a new chemical weapon supposedly being developed in North Korea – put on his jacket, turned off the lights, said goodnight to Miss Ponsonby, and headed home.

On his way out of the building, he usually made a detour to say goodbye to someone else, too. He didn't look too deeply into why. It felt nice to see more than two other people in a day, that was all.

Some days his steps would lead him up to the anteroom to M's office, where both Tanner and Moneypenny could usually be found, never leaving before M did. Some days they took him back to the gym where he could usually find someone he had at least a passing acquaintance with to wave goodbye to – even though he always found it eerie to look at all the new faces there and realise yet again that most of the field agents that had been in the Service when he joined up were either retired or dead – and some days, his steps took him to Q-branch.

Q could generally be relied upon to work just as late as Tanner and Moneypenny. Bond had ascertained that he usually came in late and staid well into the evening, keeping what his predecessor had called "students' hours". When Bond visited the department in the late afternoons the level of activity was usually low, with several desks already empty and idle conversations taking over at some of the occupied ones. The only person never involved in this frivolous behaviour was Q. Q only engaged in frivolous conversation with Bond, and even then only under the carefully constructed guise of talking shop. Bond would ask what he was working on, or ask his opinion on some weapon or technical solution mentioned in those dreary reports. Q would invariably have heard of these, and Bond often wondered if it was possible that all the manila folders and pdf-files that were passed on to him had reached Q's desk first. It wouldn't be out of question, given that Q certainly ranked higher than him both as a department head and, well, someone who was considered to have a longer career ahead of him – but when in God's name did he have time to read it all? He never seemed to be sitting at his desk when Bond came around; instead fidgeting around between workshops, server rooms and testing areas like an amphetamine addict with the IQ of a Nobel prize winner. Or several Nobel prize winners. _And the dress sense of one, too,_ thought Bond, as Nobel prize winners were usually the kind of old men you would _expect_ to see in ill-fitted slacks and cardigans with tea-stains. Sometimes, Bond thought, it was as if the old Q had invented a de-aging device, come back as a spotty youth, and then just carried on with business as usual. Other times, when Q scoffed at Bond's witticism or smirked at his own, it was nothing like that at all.

Bond smiled to himself as he rounded a corner and entered Q-branch. A middle-aged woman with headphones looked up when we walked in. "He's not here", she said instantly, as if there was no other reason for Bond to be there. He supposed there wasn't. "Conference," she said. "Won't be back until next week." Bond's heart sank more than he'd have expected it to. He turned and left, with a feeling that his entire day had been wasted.

It rained outside, and he turned up his collar. The feeling had been sneaking up on him for some time now, and he had barely registered the minute changes in his habits. It was only two nights ago that he had realised that, lately, his feet carried him to Q-branch almost every day. Now, as the rain soaked his scalp, he realised that for almost as long, he had considered every day when he didn't see Q as wasted.


	2. Moonlight - Dance

_A/N for ch 2/"word no. 9": I used google maps to find a suitable coastal town outside Rome. I've never been in Fregene and I don't know if there are Italian lyrics to "They Can't Take That Away from Me". I have, however, experienced the traffic on the motorways around Rome. I consider it a near death experience._

_Still pre-slash._

_Summary: Sometimes the missions didn't end with dead bodies and burning buildings. Sometimes they ended in a simple order to stand down and report to London tomorrow. If Bond was lucky, that order would come when he was somewhere nice and warm, with drinks, music and pleasant company._

**Moonlight—Dance**

Small, round coloured lanterns, green, pink and yellow, hung on a string around the backyard, but the lights were not strong enough to steal the show from the canopy of stars and the bright, round moon that hung above. A cool wind came in from the sea, carrying with it the smell of salt and seaweed and the sound of waves rushing to their death, but the air still held the lingering warmth of a long, sunny day. Bond stood by the plank and nursed a drink underneath the lanterns as dancing couples began to fill up the yard, swirling lazily over the cobbled stones to the sound of the three man band who were playing smooth classics from the likes of Frank Sinatra, Sam Cooke, and Mama Cass. The mark was among the dancers, moving expertly in the arms of her young companion and looking like she wasn't about to leave any time soon. She was clearly enjoying herself, but seemed more interested in staying on the dance floor than getting a room. Bond had been watching her for a few days now, and knew her as a woman of enough wisdom and self-control to postpone one pleasure for another if it meant she could have both. Settling down for a long uneventful evening, then, Bond pulled out his earpiece for a while, watched the amber liquid in his glass reflect the light of the lanterns, and enjoyed the feeling of having been transported back in time.

No more than an hour had passed when Bond saw Q in the doorway to the villa. Bond, who had been dancing with a particularly attractive local woman in a low cut black dress, excused himself with a kiss on her cheek that made her giggle, and walked back to his drink on the table. He kept an eye on Q the whole way. Q was not supposed to be here. He was meant to be in central Rome, in the offices of the Italian secret service, helping them or keeping an eye on them depending on who you asked. Yet here he stood in Fregene, outlined by the light from the room behind him, searching the crowd with his gaze. Eventually his eyes fell on Bond and he began to move across the yard. He was wearing a black suit; tie loosened and top button unbuttoned as if he had been at the party for hours like everyone else. _Clever boy_, Bond's mind supplied. As he watched Q weave between the dancing couples with deft evasive movements, turning his hips and shoulders this way and that, to avoid moving feet and elbows, Bond's gleeful and indiscriminate libido added: _and gorgeous, too_.

"Hello," he said when Q finally made his way over. "Who're you then?"

Bond took a sip of his most recent drink. Q didn't appear to be amused.

"No one is listening, Bond," he said coolly. "Not even you, it seems. Why do you insist on not using the equipment you've been given?"

"That's simply not true," Bond said with a sly smile, "I use my equipment all the time."

Q still refused to rise to the bait. Disappointing. Bond watched green lanterns reflecting in Q's eyes as the Quartermaster initiated a probably quite justified tirade.

"Well, I finished decoding the information our Italian friends found, and I meant to tell you over the comm, but since you'd turned it off I had to find you. Do you know how people drive on the stretch between central Rome and this place? I thought I was going to die before ..."

James put down his drink again took a step forward.

"Why yes, I would like to dance," he said and reached out his arms towards Q. The non sequitur silenced Q. He looked at Bond in obvious bewilderment.

"Pardon?"

Bond took a step closer and put his right hand lightly on Q's waist. Q gave the offending limb a glare.

"No one might be listening," Bond said, still holding his left hand out for Q to take, "but plenty of people are watching. A young man they don't recognize just rushed in and started talking to a man they've only known for a few days. If he bursts out again as soon as he's imparted his message, they might get suspicious of both men."

"I'm not ... " Q stuttered, "I won't ... I mean, I don't dance."

James felt his smile grow into a grin.

"Then I'll lead."

Without wasting more time waiting for Q to react, Bond moved his hand from Q's waist to the small of his back and guided him out onto the impromptu dance floor in the square of lanterns.

"Won't this look suspicious?" Q whispered. His body was stiff as a plank in Bond's arms, and his feet struggled to follow Bond's. "Aren't these people Catholics?"

"Nominally," Bond agreed. "But they're not exactly monks and nuns, and I overheard the hostess talking about her daughter's girlfriend earlier, so I don't think anyone will risk protesting too loudly in front of her."

Q swallowed and stumbled slightly as Bond spun them around.

"I'll have to take your word for it," he mumbled. His grip on James' shoulder relented a bit, so that it no longer felt as if he was hanging on for dear life. With his other hand, he flexed his fingers. They were cold and dry against the back of Bond's hand.

Bond smiled. He thought there was a slight blush on Q's cheeks, but it might have been a trick of one of the pink lanterns. Q's eyes were big and dark and focused on Bond. As Bond had become accustomed to by now, they gave nothing away. From the other side of the yard, the singer crooned an Italian version of "They Can't Take That Away from Me".

"So, what was so important it couldn't wait?" Bond asked.

"What? Oh. It seems your gut instinct was correct. Compagnoni is involved with some fairly shady characters, but she has never been in contact with Bantin. It was a false lead. His Italian contact is someone else. Compagnoni is the Italian police force's responsibility. We've been told to back off."

While he had talked, Q's feet had settled into the rhythm of the song, and Bond was now leading him effortlessly over the dance floor. He wouldn't call Q a natural, but he followed well when he relaxed. The moon shone down on Q's dark curls and painted them in shades of black and blue. Bond could feel the younger man's pulse in their interlocked hands, steady and sure. Their bodies brushed against each other with every step. Another dancer bumped into Q and sent him stumbling into Bond. Bond felt his breath across his face.

"You came all the way here to tell me we're off duty?" James asked. This time he was almost certain Q's blush was real.

"Any action from you after it was made official that Compagnoni is outside our jurisdiction could have caused a minor diplomatic incident," Q pointed out, his voice dry and sharp like champagne. Bond wondered if his mouth tasted that way, too.

"Fair enough," he replied.

They danced a few more steps in silence, until the band finished the song and Q cleared his throat.

"Well, we should probably leave now."

Bond feigned flattered surprise.

"Already? You surprise me, Quartermaster. I thought I would at least have to buy you a few drinks first."

Q's glare lacked a bit of edge when it was fired from such short range.

The band started playing "Dream a Little Dream of Me". This time the singer chose the English lyrics:

_Stars shining bright above you  
Night breezes seem to whisper 'I love you'  
Birds singing in the sycamore tree  
Dream a little dream of me_

Q was still standing in Bond's arms, and it seemed a shame to let him go.

"One more dance?" Bond asked, and took a few steps to emphasise the question. Q looked like he was about to protest out of sheer confusion, so James hurried to add: "we are off duty, after all aren't we? And it would be a crime to leave such a splendid party so soon. Especially now when we can enjoy it without worrying about work."

"We still have to find Bantin's actual connection in Rome," Q pointed out.

"Tonight?" James asked and pulled Q a little closer so that they were chest to chest. Their noses brushed.

"No," Q said. His voice was barely louder than a breath, but it remained steady.

_Stars fading but I linger on, dear  
Still craving your kiss  
I'm longing to linger till dawn, dear ..._

Bond lost track of how long they danced, but the sky was slowly brightening as they walked away from the party. Only a few stars were still keeping the fading moon company. Bond wondered if he could get them all the way to his hotel before Q asked for a taxi into the city. Q was tired and tipsy and not quite capable of walking in a straight line, so Bond had wrapped as arm around his waist to keep him from stumbling into the street. Q had yet to object. Instead he was leaning into it, and his body was a warm, solid and very welcome presence against Bond's side as the sun slowly rose over the Italian coast.


	3. Gun - Shot

A/N: Spoilers for the beginning of Skyfall. Missing scenes, framed between two scenes from the movie. Some bad language. Relationship study, Bond & M. Bond POV.

**Gun – Shot**

_"I said take the shot!"_

_"I can't. I may hit Bond."_

_Bond hears the voices, but he can't quite process the words. He's on top of a speeding train and he's fighting for his life – his and that of every agent on that list. He'll take down this bastard if it's the last thing he does. M knows that. Doesn't she?_

_"Take the bloody shot!"_

_He's hit in the shoulder. He flies backwards. His feet lose contact with the train. He falls._

_He thinks: "That's two agents down in one mission, for a list that's now gone. Fuck it all."_

_He hits the water. _

- x -

_As Bond crawls onto the bank of the river, coughing up water and, it feels like, most of his lungs, he's still not entirely sure he's alive. He can't hear his own coughing over the roar of the water and the ringing in his ears. It's a strange experience, like watching a film with the wrong sound effects put in._

_He's not entirely sure where he is or what he's doing there. He can hear M's voice in his head, barking out an order:_

_"Take the bloody shot!"_

_He presses his hand to his shoulder. It comes back bloody._

_He faints again._

- x -

_Bond wakes up. Consciousness returns slowly, one observation after another._

_He's lying down, in a bed._

_Deep breath. Take stock. He's alive and breathing freely. He feels slightly drugged, but it doesn't feel like anything more potent than regular painkillers._

_Smells. Sounds. Lights._

_He's in a hospital._

_More clattering than beeping. Not the most exclusive of hospitals then._

_Voices. Faces._

_He's not in England._

_At this observation, he tries to sit up. His head spins. Voices are raised. Hands push him down._

_No, he decides. He wouldn't get far. Safer to stay here a while longer than to attempt to leave in this state._

_He sleeps._

- x -

_He wakes again in the night. He tries to remember where he is and why he's there._

_"Take the bloody shot!"_

_The memory speaks in M's voice. An order to him?_

_Instinctively, he flexes his shoulder. Spikes of pain shoot through his arm and torso. No. An order _against _him?_

_He can't remember._

_"Take the bloody shot!"_

_He tries to concentrate. It slips away. There's no real memory, there's only those words and a fleeting feeling. He feels ... _

_... betrayed. He feels betrayed._

_There's a lump in his throat. He decides it's nervousness over not knowing where he is. _

_He falls asleep again._

- x -

_He asks the nurses how long he's been there. Three days. Came in beaten, shot, unconscious and half drowned._

_More memories of how he got there return to him. "I can't. I may hit Bond." "Take the bloody shot!"_

_No, he hadn't been betrayed. Just not trusted enough. Just expendable. This shouldn't matter to him. He's always been expendable. It's his job to be expendable. _

_It matters._

_He gets up and leaves the hospital when he's been there five days. They ask him not to leave. They say there's still shrapnel in his shoulder. He doesn't care._

_No one has come looking for him. They will at least have looked for his body, won't they? He must have been washed up somewhere where they didn't even expect his dead body to turn up, then. But even so, a nameless Caucasian male with a shoulder wound who spends five days in a Turkish hospital? They can't have been looking very hard._

_"Take the bloody shot," M ordered._

_Well. Fuck you too, M._

- x -

_James is no hypocrite. He knows and admits that he has issues with trust, and with women, and with trusting women. That doesn't change the fact that he's always trusted M more than any man he has ever known. If anything, it makes this whole thing worse. He's being childish, he knows. He shouldn't expect special treatment. Not even when he's been receiving it for years._

_Maybe he's even had special treatment from the very start? He was one of M's golden boys, after all. The hand-picked ones. Talented, driven young men. Orphans. Men who had no connections, no family, by no choice of their own. Starved men. Little ducklings, imprinted on M. She could have left them alone. She could have let them go out into the world and find_ _real families instead of using them, tying them down to the Country and the Service, and perpetuating their loneliness._

_Then again, she_ did _let him go once. When he fell in love with Vesper and decided to leave. M just sighed and knew he'd come back. And he did. Tail between his legs, he came running back to mother, to hide under her wings and never leave again._

_Maybe she was protecting them. Maybe the real world was not a good place for men like them. Men like Bond._

_So he doesn't even think about attempting to start a normal life, this time. He wouldn't set himself up for that disappointment. He finds a gambling den, and when he has money – and has fought off the men who are convinced he must have cheated – he finds a beach, somewhere to drink, and someone's bed to sleep in. This is what he knows and understands: guns and fighting, cars and clothes, but also cards, drink, and the female body. Let others have their nine to five jobs, their families and their picket fences. He doesn't belong there._

- x -

_It's morning, the bar is empty, and Bond is considering leaving his latest lover before she becomes too attached, when the news reader utters the words "terrorist attack" and "London" in the same sentence. That's when Bond looks up, and sees a clip of black smoke rising from the MI6 building. His heart stops._

_"Take the bloody shot!"_

_No. He left her behind. He doesn't care anymore._

_Yet he watches her office burn, and his heart stops._

_He's been lying to himself. It's not just that he can't live the way ordinary responsible people do. He can't even live the way irresponsible people do. He can't stay among the palm trees and the beach_ _huts. He doesn't belong here any more than he belongs in suburbia. He belongs in that building – the one they're showing on the CNN news, on fire._

_She was attacked, and he wasn't there. He feels like a dog. _

- x -

_He doesn't make the decision to go back. It's a decision that was made for him, a long time ago. He makes a decision to go to her flat, though. He stands by the window as she walks into the room and heads straight for the bottle. Like mother like son, he thinks suddenly. She's dressed in black. For him? No, he realises, for the people who died in the attack. But he's seen the obituary sitting on her laptop._

_She startles even though he hasn't moved, even though she hasn't turned her head in his direction, and spins around with only a quiet gasp. Rumour says she was a field agent once, in the cold war days. Bond doesn't doubt it for a second._

_"Where the hell have you been?" she asks._

_He smiles._

_"Enjoying death. Double-O-seven, reporting for duty."_

_She asks why he's been pretending to be dead. He throws her words back in her face: "Take the bloody shot." As he knew she would, she merely reminds him that he knows the rules of the game. She doesn't welcome him back. There's no warmth, no sentimentality. The only emotion on display is a sense of glee in her voice when she tells him they've sold his flat._

_"You should have called."_

_"I'll find a hotel," he says._

_"Well, you're bloody well not sleeping here."_

_She stalks out of the room without another word. Bond smiles to himself. He didn't feel like he was home when he came into the country, or even when he arrived in London. _

_He's home now._


	4. M - Bitch

_A/N: MAJOR SPOILERS for Skyfall. Though, if you haven't seen it already, what are you doing here? In fact, if you haven't seen it, what are you doing anywhere except in front of a screen, watching Skyfall?_

_Some bad language. Relationship study, Bond & M. Bond POV. Canon character death._

**M – Bitch**

As they lowered her coffin into the ground, all Bond could think was that the name on the stone looked fake. He had known it for years, yes, but it still felt like an alias. Who had ever used that name? Her husband? He had been dead for over a decade, maybe even two. Bond had never met him. She was _M_. It felt wrong that she should be disguised as someone else in death. Someone ordinary. She had never been ordinary.

A pang of fear and hesitation had shot through him just before he'd left for the funeral. He had thought he might cry. He wasn't sure how he would have handled that. Bond didn't cry. If he did, he certainly didn't do it in public. He hadn't cried in front of people since his parents died. He had cried when he held Vesper's dead body in his arms. He had thought, then, that he would never cry over a woman again. In a certain sense, that was still true, and would probably remain so. But he had held M's dead body in his arms, too, and he had cried over her. He had cried until Kincade had prised him away, when they had heard the cars come. Kincade had wrapped an arm around his back, and he had felt like he was a little boy again. It was a horrible feeling: the pain, the powerlessness, the rage at the world – and now the rage at _her _for putting him through that again.

He hadn't cried. His eyes hadn't even turn red. He knew because as the attendants broke up Tanner shook his head at him and said: "You really are a cold-hearted bastard, aren't you? Still, you are here. I suppose that counts for something." Bond wasn't sure it did. Not when the name on the stone was the name of a person Bond had never known. Not when the speeches had been made by politicians and grandchildren.

There would be no ceremony for the M Bond had known.

Part of him had wanted to speak, but even if it had been allowed, what would he have said? He couldn't say: "You all sit here now with your sad faces and your finest black clothes, but I held her in my arms as she bled out." He couldn't say: "I'm the one who heard her last words. She looked up at me and said 'I did get one thing right'." He really couldn't say: "Do you know what? Silva might have been mad as a hatter, but he was right. She _was _our mother. She was mine. She raised me. She taught me. She scolded me. She believed in me." And under no circumstances whatsoever could he say: "She was a bloody bitch most of the time, but that's why I loved her."

Mallory told him, as they walked out of the graveyard toward a big black car that would drive them back to Vauxhall, about the lines she had quoted at the hearing just before Silva had burst in. Lord Alfred Tennyson's _Ulysses_:

"Though much is taken, much abides; and though  
We are not now that strength which in old days  
Moved earth and heaven, that which we are, we are,  
One equal temper of heroic hearts,  
Made weak by time and fate, but strong in will  
To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield."

"I think she was thinking about you," Mallory said. Bond gave him a look, raising one eyebrow. He waited for an explanation. "You and her," Mallory specified. "The old school. The ones who remember the old ways. The ones who recognise that the old ways were new ways once too, and that at the end of the day mentality matters more than method."

"You've changed your tune," Bond said.

Mallory shrugged, and then cringed slightly. He'd forgotten about the shoulder. Plenty of shoulder wounds going around these days, Bond thought, and couldn't help smiling.

"I've remembered a thing or two. And I was never quite the antagonist I think you took me for, double-O-seven. Though I meant what I said in her office, too. She had a soft spot for you. She sent you out into the field ..."

"... 'knowing I wasn't ready, knowing I would likely die', yes, I know. That's what Silva said, too."

Mallory looked none too pleased to be compared to that man.

"He did?" He said, straightening his back as if making ready to defend himself. "Why? To taunt you?"

To his own surprise, Bond found himself smiling at the memory of the game of cat and mouse – or was that rat and rat? – that he and Silva had been playing that day. Somehow it seemed more amusing and less menacing in retrospect.

"To get me on his side, I think," he said, and held up the car door for Mallory. "To get me to think M was a manipulative old bitch." Mallory cringed at the language, and Bond smiled even wider. "As if I didn't know that already."

Mallory made a move to get into the car, but stopped to study Bond.

"Is that really how you feel about her? Even on a day like this?"

Bond went silent, unsure of how to reply. He had thought Mallory understood.

Hesitantly, he said: "Silva called her our mother. Did you never call your mother names, Mallory?"

Bond considered that sentence and the man in front of him, and before Mallory could reply, he said: "No, I suppose you didn't. Well. We aren't all so well behaved."

Mallory smiled. Then his face slowly fell again, and Bond could see the condolences and the questions after his wellbeing coming a mile away. He quickly ducked into the passenger seat before he had to face that. Behind him, Mallory sat down in the back seat and fastened his seat belt. As the car drove out, he cleared his throat. Bond braced himself.

"Well," Mallory said awkwardly, "I don't use that word. But she was a remarkably stubborn old lady, I'll give you that."

Bond laughed. In the rear-view mirror he saw Mallory was smiling wistfully too.

"And she practically _was_ the Service," Mallory added. "I don't envy the person they'll get to try and fill those shoes."

"No, Sir," said Bond. "Neither do I."


	5. Agent - Provocateur

A/N for this chapter: Slight 00Q-pairing, pre-slash. Some rude language. Mostly a character study of Bond.

I've been listening to a lot of Discworld-novels lately, and I think a bit of Commander Sam Vimes crept into my characterisation of Commander James Bond here. I'm not sure who Q would be in that world. He's a little too brash and too influential to be Drumknott, but not calculating nor influential _enough _to be Vetinari.

_"Agent provocateur. A person employed to induce others to break the law so they can be convicted" - Oxford English Dictionary_

* * *

**Agent - Provocateur**

For the purpose of the operation, Bond was pretending to be a collector. Not the kind who will pay absolutely anything for the oddest little items just for the sheer satisfaction of possessing it, but the kind who collects the sort of things other people will pay _him_ absolutely anything for. He had spent weeks in Johannesburg, cultivating the image of the experienced buyer, the prospector. He was making the right connections and he was slowly catching the interest of the mark. It was a long game. Between his current trip and the preparations that had gone before it, he hadn't seen London in two, almost three, months. Even now, as he stood watching the mark from across the room in the for Bond almost homely environment of a casino, he felt his spirits sink at the thought that it might be another couple of months before he would walk down the Themes under grey skies again.

"Stop fiddling with the glasses, double-O-seven!" came Q's voice over the ether.

Bond lowered his hand from where he had unconsciously moved it.

"I'm not used to wearing them," he muttered, although he had worn them since he left Europe. He already knew full well that he should quell the impulse to touch the glasses too often, and that he could if he actually tried, but the occasional flickering of text on the lenses in front of him was so distracting that it was frustrating. The calm in Q's voice only served to grate his already frayed nerves. Bond liked the man, but he wasn't in the mood to hear other people being calm and carefree.

"You've worn sunglasses, haven't you?" Q went on in the same tone.

"Yes," Bond said, slowly, as if explaining to a particularly annoying child, "but they don't usually send me messages."

_Or talk back_, Bond thought.

He understood why HQ might want to see what he saw, but why he needed to both receive messages in text and put up with Q's voice in his ear was beyond him. He suspected Q just wanted to show off.

He remembered when Q had demonstrated the glasses. He'd tried them on himself, first, perhaps just to make sure they were actually on before handing them to Bond. When Q had removed his ordinary glasses, instead of merely squinting his eyes had become unfocused, the pattern of their movement separated from the ongoing stream of words that had been passing his lips, as if he'd been completely blinded. Bond had had to fight the urge to wave a hand in front of him. Q's eyes looked uncharacteristically soft when they weren't focusing in intense concentration on a screen, or glaring at Bond from under arched eyebrows.

"You shouldn't be so easily distracted," said Q.

Bond came back to the present, and hummed something that Q could take as agreement or disagreement as best he pleased.

When Bond finally got back to his hotel that evening, after another day of steady but excruciatingly slow progress, it was late. His room couldn't have been renovated in the last forty years, the walls being such a horrible shade of maroon no amount of "retro trends" could have justified it. It made Bond think of some old quote of Oscar Wilde about fighting a duel to the death with his wallpaper. Bond could sympathise. The carpet was plush and deep but smelled of cigarette smoke when he did his push-ups on it. When he turned off the lamp in the ceiling, which was fixed in the middle of a much-needed fan, a little lamp under a burgundy shade on the bedside table struggled to keep all four corners of the bed visible. Reading by that light would have been out of the question, even if Bond had felt like it.

The earpiece and the glasses had both gone dead some time earlier, with neither HQ nor Bond anticipating further action that night. Bond put the glasses on his bedside table as he sat down on the bed, and rubbed the bridge of his nose. Why was it people thought of technical devices that way: dead or alive, cooperating or not cooperating, being helpful or acting up? They were only tools – useful for some things, less useful for others.

_Like you, James._

_'So why do you need me?' 'Every now and then, a trigger has to be pulled.'_

When Bond began his career in the Service, being sent on a mission meant you'd have to improvise, think on your feet, and make difficult decisions that would affect the outcome of the entire operation without having the luxury of asking HQ for advice and permission first. He had practically been his own little field office: tactician, technician, spy and executive commander, all rolled into one. Judge, jury and executioner, as Felix would say. That was what the double-O meant: that he was trusted to make tough decisions himself, even decisions about when it was or wasn't necessary to kill, and that whatever he decided to do became not just his own actions but the actions of MI6 and of England.

What was he today, with HQ watching him and talking to him every step of the way? A long distance weapon? Someone to send out when people like Q decided a trigger needed to be pulled? A tool. Perhaps not even the sharpest tool in the box, anymore.

_To hell with that. _

He picked up the glasses again. How did you know they were off? Why hadn't Q explained that? Or had he explained it, and Bond had forgot?

_No, stop that. You're not losing your memory. You've just passed forty, not sixty-five, for god's sake. You're letting Q make you feel old, when he can't be more than ten years younger than you. If you can't remember, it's only because you weren't paying attention._

Still. Ten years could be a long time. Enough time to die a hundred times over, in Bond's line of work. Enough time for technology to run away even from someone who'd always proved adept at catching up. It had certainly been enough time for the Service to change beyond recognition. Bond found himself returning to the thought of retirement more and more often, these days. But what would he do if he did retire? Settle down in the countryside and breed sheep? _Not bloody likely_. Carry on in smaller scale, as a private bodyguard perhaps? What would be the point in that? If he was to be shot down protecting anything, he'd rather it be his country than some rich brat who got daddy to sign Bond's paycheck.

No, he'd carry on in the service until he died, there was no point in denying that. If the prospect didn't thrill the way it once had, well, surely that was only to be expected? If he sometimes found himself thinking "just don't let me become an embarrassment before I go out", what did it matter?

He held up the glasses in front of himself, staring into them as he would if they were mounted on another person. A younger agent. The new model. Whatever they needed these days. Bond wasn't even sure _what_ the MI6 required of him anymore.

"Who are you?" he asked the glasses.

They gleamed in the lamplight, and offered no reply.

"Feeling introspective, Bond?" said a voice in Bond's ear.

Bond flew to his feet before he had a second to think, his hand reaching for the Walther under his arm. His heart had taken up lodgings in his throat and was hammering away there when he gathered his wits about him again.

"Q? What the hell? I thought you left hours ago."

_And I had forgotten I was still wearing the earpiece,_ Bond didn't say, because no good would come of telling Q that. It was enough that Bond's voice teetered on the brink of "obviously shaken". He sat back down on the bed and leant against the headboard.

"I came back out here to check on the emergency connections before I go to bed," Q replied.

Bond's brain immediately got to work with the implications. "Back out here" could only mean the main hall of Q-branch that Q had been speaking from earlier. Yet he had chosen the words "before I go to bed" rather than "before I go home".

"Sleeping at the office, Q?"

"Only these last few days when we've been monitoring the mark, until he makes a move," Q said, not even bothering to deny it.

Where could Q sleep? He had an office down in Q-branch somewhere; Bond was sure he had seen the door, but he had never seen inside it. Was it large enough to hold a sofa bed? Had Q made arrangements for this sort of thing? It was practically part of his job description, after all: problem solving and sorting out the practical arrangements, making sure the equipment every MI6 division needed was where they needed it, when they needed it. No true quartermaster could spend all his time sitting by a laptop, no matter _how_ much damage he could do with it.

"Is there an emergency bed that folds out of the wall in your office," Bond asked, "or hammocks in the armoury perhaps? That could be a nice place to sleep. Perfectly sound proof."

Q laughed. Bond found himself smiling. When he closed his eyes and shut out the room around him he could almost imagine he was back in London, stopping by to talk to the Quartermaster at the end of the day.

"There's just a sofa," Q admitted, "but at least it was selected especially to be comfortable enough to sleep in. Hammocks in the armoury might be a good idea if we ever have to go into lock down, though. Maybe I should ask M for the funds."

"I'm sure he'd appreciate the foresight," Bond said, still smiling.

"If he doesn't, I'll just tell him it was your idea," Q replied.

They were both silent for a moment. Earlier, when the operation had been in full swing, Q's silences had been filled with the noises of people walking, conversation being carried out in the background, and keyboards being typed on. Now, Bond could hear Q's breaths, slow and steady.

"Are you alone?" he asked.

The breathing stopped.

With the slow reactions only a bone-deep tiredness could cause in him, Bond realised what a line like that could be construed as in this context. What it usually was_ meant_ to be construed as if it came from him.

"The building's never empty," was the reply when it came, and then, perhaps because Q remembered that Bond knew that already, "but down here, yes. Cook will be here in a few minutes to monitor what needs monitoring overnight, but he's not back from his dinner yet."

Q's voice was studiously flat. It held no innuendo, no disapproval, no hints of any kind.

Bond considered his choices. He could end the call with a simple "good night then, Q". He could carefully test the waters for something else by asking if Q was annoyed to be kept from his bed. He couldn't say, _shouldn't_ say, "will you please talk to me until he comes back, because your voice is better than the ones in my head," but part of him wanted to.

That made up his mind.

"Don't let me keep you then," he said.

Q's breathing was steady again. Bond imagined him leaning over his little podium in the empty hall, hall in darkness. He wasn't sure why he imagined it to be dark. It could be flooded in light for all he knew. Q breathed in, and out, and in ...

"I should say a few words to Cook when he gets here, either way," Q said.

In his relief and in an impulse to keep up the conversation, Bond rather embarrassingly found himself asking what the weather was like in London. Instead of remarking on the trite and predictable choice of subject, however, Q quickly launched into a tirade about unrelenting rain, hints of sleet, and winds that had no business being so cold at this time of year, and ...

"... I really just wish I was there with you."

Q went abruptly quiet, remained so for a second, then blurted out: "I mean ... You know what I mean. Because of the weather. Obviously."

Yes, it had been obvious. That unfortunately hadn't stopped the image of Q's lanky body stretched out on the bed beside him from forming in Bond's head.

"I'm sure the weather would be glad to have you," Bond's said before he could stop himself. He almost bit his tongue, but Q laughed again. It sounded a little bit strained, but that could have been the late hour and nothing more.

"Sometimes, Bond, I can't believe you're real."

Before Bond could ask if that was a compliment or an insult, a door clicked and he heard footsteps.

"Here's my replacement," Q said. With relief or with regret, Bond wondered?

"Good night then, Q," he said out loud this time.

"Eight o'clock tomorrow, your time," said Q, indicating the time the glasses would have to go back on Bond's nose. He realised he was still holding them, and placed them back on the table.

"Yes, I remember," he said.

"Good. Good night."

The line went dead. After a moment of silence, Bond took out the earpiece and put it down beside the glasses.

Tools, he thought. Tools of communication, connecting him to London. No more being the lone gunman. Perhaps he could learn to live with that.


End file.
